Balram Halwai, the narrator of The White Tiger, is not going to let a lack of education keep him in the dark. He is heading for glory in India's bright future; he will be one of those who stuffs cash into brown envelopes for policemen and politicians, and not just another victim.

Aravind Adiga's first novel is couched as a cocksure confession from a deceitful, murderous philosopher runt who has the brass neck to question his lowly place in the order of things. His disrespect for his elders and betters is shocking - even Mahatma Gandhi gets the lash of his scornful tongue. Balram has worked out very early in life that good deeds usually have awful consequences. This is because he, along with most lowly Indians, inhabits the Darkness, a place where basic necessities such as clean water, a home, money and health are routinely snatched away by the wealthy, who live up there in the Light.

Balram gets his lucky break when he learns to handle a car, then pesters his way into a job as driver for one of the landlords from his village. (No need to mention that the landlord is evil and grasping - they always are in modern Indian novels.) The master-servant relationship suits Balram well, his obsequious and ever-attentive exterior never revealing the furious hatred beneath. But we know, of course, that the anger must out. Waiting for that moment is entertaining stuff because Balram has the voice of what may, or may not, be a new India: quick-witted, half-baked, self-mocking, and awesomely quick to seize an advantage. He happily abuses the religious foibles and hatreds of others where it suits, dispatching a rival driver to destitution via a little anti-Muslim prejudice. Even caste can be handy: the Halwais traditionally never drank alcohol, so he plays on that to wriggle free from an accusation of drink-driving. Sacred cows? Don't be a moo. The man who desires a life of chandeliers, laptop computers and branded goods has to learn that everything is for sale.

Balram's boss, Ashok, spends much of his time in the shopping malls of Delhi, though it was in America that he picked up some superficial liberal tendencies. His protestations of friendship towards Balram can never transcend age-old grievances, however, and Balram knows only too well that this weak creature must be punished for the sins of his forefathers. That punishment, ironically, is the stepping stone to Balram's glorious place in India's future - as an entrepreneur in the hallowed city of Bangalore.

There is much to commend in this novel, a witty parable of India's changing society, yet there is also much to ponder. The scales have fallen from the eyes of some Indian writers, many either living abroad, or educated there like Adiga. The home country is invariably presented as a place of brutal injustice and sordid corruption, one in which the poor are always dispossessed and victimised by their age-old enemies, the rich. Characters at the colourful extremeties of society are Dickensian grotesques, Phiz sketches, adrift in a country that is lurching rapidly towards bland middle-class normality.

My hunch is that this is fundamentally an outsider's view and a superficial one. There are so many other alternative Indias out there, uncontacted and unheard. Aravind Adiga is an interesting talent and I hope he will immerse himself deeper into that astonishing country, then go on to greater things.

· Kevin Rushby's Paradise: A History of the Idea That Rules the World is published by Robinson